What Is Google AdSense

Google's AdSense program lets you sell advertising space for other people's ads on your
website--and not just any ads that Google chooses, but ads that are relevant to your site's content
pages. The service is free, and you earn money every time someone clicks on an ad.

In this article:

AdSense is a great program, though Google has given it a confusing name. If they'd
called it AdSpace, you'd know right away what it's about: selling advertising space on
your website. Despite the nomenclature issue, AdSense (www.google.com/adsense) has
become popular with bloggers and other people who run noncommercial sites. You
sign up, carve out some space on your pages for the ads (Figure 1), paste a few lines
of code from Google into the HTML for your site, and let Google fill in your pages
with color-coordinated ads. When somebody clicks one of the ads, Google pays you
a fee (the amount varies, and the company doesn't disclose its payments).

Note: AdSense can be tricky for e-commerce sites because you can't fully control which ads appear on your
site, and you wouldn't want to run ads for your competitors' merchandise right next to your own displays. You can, however, filter out some ads.

Though you can't decide which ads appear on your site, Google does a very nice
job of assessing your pages and supplying ads that might interest your visitors. For
example, if you run a site about the history of window treatments, Google is likely
to dish up ads for vintage blinds and specialty curtain rods. That kind of relevance
is important, because Google doesn't pay you when somebody sees an ad on your
site; it pays you when somebody clicks an ad. So you want Google to fill your space with blurbs likely to interest your readers.

The $64,000 question is, of course, how much can you make? The exact answer is:
it depends. If your site gets tons of visitors, and you focus on a narrow topic, there's
a good chance Google will serve up ads that appeal to a lot of people hitting your
site. For example, if you run a popular site devoted to mobile gadgetry, you might
make enough to buy a new device every few months. If your site gets sporadic traffic, or more important, if it's not clearly about something, it may be hard for Google
to supply highly relevant ads, and you might make enough to cover a box of paper
clips every so often.

Figure 1.
Top: On a Google results
page, ads from the AdWords
program are called sponsored
links. They appear
above and to the right of the
regular results.

Bottom: On other web
pages, ads come from the
AdSense program and get
the label, "Ads by Google."

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When you approach SEO, you must take some time to understand the characteristics of the traffic that you need to drive your business. Then go out and use the techniques explained in this PDF to grab some traffic--and bring life to your business.